Four-year-old Andrei Pavlov was feeding ducks near his home in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, when he fell through the ice into the freezing water of a pond. A stray dog named Naida immediately began barking frantically.

“She’s not just a dog,” Tatiyana Balashova told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “She’s not a pure bred, but she’s still very special.”

Balashova who usually feeds stray dogs in Krasnoyarsk was the person who reacted to Naida’s alert.

“I heard Naida barking on the pond bank, like she was calling for help. She saw me, ran up, looked at me and ran back to the pond…”

Balashova quickly realised that a child had fallen into the water and rushed to find help from utility service workers, who were luckily close at hand.

“Because of the fact the boy was taken out of water pretty quickly and due to medics’ professionalism, this story had a happy end for Andrei, without any serious consequences,” Vladimir Fokin, the chief doctor at the hospital Andrei was admitted to, told KP.

Andrei spent a few days in the hospital recovering, and is now in satisfactory health. Naida has been adopted by a family that lives 500 km away. The canine adoption was arranged before the near-drowning incident, and the new owners are particularly proud of Naida's heroism. Link -via Arbroath